Hostwinds vs HostGator in 2020 – Wow! Who Would Have Thought That Hostwinds Would Win?

Mark Holden

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April 26, 2020

Hostwinds vs HostGator is a tough matchup, given that both hosts offer similar features and options for small to medium-sized websites and businesses. Despite the similarities, one big difference changes the whole competition: value for money.

To compare Hostwinds and HostGator, I tested these two web hosting services for pricing, features, performance, support, and security. Unlike Hostwinds, HostGator will charge more when it’s time to renew your plan. Even though HostGator offers faster loading speeds, Hostwinds’ ease of use and value for money make it the winner.

1. Plans and Pricing

Hostwinds Offers More Plans at a Cheaper Renewal Rate

In this section, I’ll compare Hostwinds and HostGator’s shared hosting options. Right off the bat, you’ll notice that HostGator has three shared hosting plans for Linux – Hatchling, Baby, and Business.

Hostwinds offers personal and business Linux-based shared hosting with three plans under each category: Basic, Advanced, and Ultimate.

Although HostGator offers better promotional discounts when you first purchase a plan, most of Hostwinds’ shared hosting plans renew at a cheaper monthly cost than HostGator’s. Even Hostwinds’ most expensive business hosting plan only costs a little more than HostGator’s Business plan upon renewal.

Now, let’s talk about freebies. Both vendors throw in a free SSL certificate and a free domain with annual subscriptions.

Hostwinds also offers a free dedicated IP address and free CDN with all plans, but HostGator doesn’t. However, HostGator does offer $100 of free credit for Google Adwords, and $100 of free credit for Bing.

What about refunds? HostGator is popular for its 45-day money-back guarantee. In contrast, Hostwinds offers a less generous, more complicated refund policy of 48 hours, 14 days, or 30 days, depending on the contract period and whether it’s a first-time purchase or a renewal.

3. Performance

HostGator Delivers Faster Loading Speeds

To enhance its performance, Hostwinds offers SSD storage with all plans, while HostGator has SSD only for its dedicated servers. SSD storage performs much faster than traditional disk drives.

Hostwinds also provides CloudFlare CDN with its shared and business hosting plans. A CDN acts as a global network and increases the loading speed of web pages no matter which continent they’re accessed from.

While Hostwinds has a 99.9999% uptime guarantee and a 100% satisfaction guarantee, HostGator only has a 99.9% uptime guarantee. All this made me expect Hostwinds to smash HostGator in this performance challenge. Strange to say, our performance tests proved otherwise.

Even though both providers scored the same in the Sucuri page loading test, HostGator showed faster speeds. Even in the uptime tests, HostGator kept its uptime promise slightly better than Hostwinds did.

4. Security

Hostwinds Offers More Security Options

HostGator and Hostwinds both offer a free SSL certificate with all plans, and HostGator offers SiteLock as a paid add-on.

Hostwinds offers numerous security add-ons. The most interesting one is Windshield, which can be added for a single one-time fee. Windshield protects your server against potential threats by doing a security audit, setting up a firewall, and carrying out other server-hardening procedures to give an extra security boost.

Hostwinds offers automatic daily backups with all its services as an add-on, while HostGator performs weekly backups by default.

5. Support

HostGator’s Customer Support Is More Responsive

Both Hostwinds and HostGator offer multiple support options.

HostGator has a more comprehensive knowledge base that covers more topics than Hostwinds’ knowledge base. HostGator also has video tutorials for different topics. It’s worth noting that I had to switch browsers to access Hostgator’s Knowledge Base and video tutorials.

HostGator also offers live chat and phone support. However, you usually wait for up to 10 minutes before you’re connected with an agent.

Hostwinds offers live chat, phone support, a ticket system, and email support. However, the live chat support isn’t very knowledgeable. I had to contact them twice to get the correct information about the CloudFlare CDN feature.

The winner? HostGator, for offering more self-help resources and more knowledgeable live chat support.

It’s a Win for Hostwinds

It was definitely challenging to choose between Hostwinds and HostGator. They’re both reliable, feature-packed web hosting services. Despite better performance and more helpful customer support, HostGator lost to Hostwinds because of better value for money, more features, and more robust security options.

Hostwinds is a US-based company owned by CEO Peter Holden who founded it in 2010. HostGator is owned by Endurance International Group (EIG), which is in charge of HostGator’s billing and transaction information.

Does Hostwinds offer fast loading speeds?

According to our Hostwinds performance test, Hostwinds does deliver fast loading speeds across the U.S. and in Australia. However, it doesn’t provide the same impressive performance in other parts of the world.

Which host is better, Hostwinds or HostGator?

While both are very good choices for small and medium websites, Hostwinds is better than HostGator in terms of affordability, ease-of-use, and variety of web hosting plans. HostGator, on the other hand, outperforms Hostwinds when it comes to performance and customer support. You should check our list of the best web hosting companies before making any final decisions.

Mark Holden

Mark is a full stack web developer specializing in HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, MySQL, and PHP. When he’s not busy building websites or geeking out over the latest addition to his ever-growing gadget collection, he enjoys playing drums for his progressive rock band. He can also make a mean Spanish omelet.

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